rewrite blade runner essay

How is blade runner post modern?

Blade Runner by Ridley Scott (1982) is set in 2019 in a futuristic and dystopian city the audience are immediately introduced to the neon lit city with flying cars, densely packed skyscrapers and giant sized advertisements. However juxtaposing this elegant view of the city through the use of low angled shots it is revealed that the city is clustered and dark, and has the sense of the 50’s with low key lighting and smoky alleys which stereotypically resembles old crime / murder and gangster films. This is the beginning of the post modern aesthetic and mixing of textual references as a neo-noir visual style.

Throughout the film there is constant hybridity with the mixing of the futuristic views, 50’s views, cultures and social statuses. The mixing of culture is shown when Deckard, an American in LA, is shown in a long shot in a middle of the street where many people are rushing past, low lighting and dominating colours of blue and greys are shown, excluding the stereotypical neon lights of red and oriental patterns. Deckard then goes and takes a seat at an olden day styled noodle bar lit by cheap florescent blue lighting, his surroundings are of oriental people and loud crowd noises. Through the Mise en scene we can see that Deckard is not of dominance especially when he orders his food in English and the man does not reply in that dialect, this shows that English is not a dominant language any more.

The blurring of boundaries is also evident in this film as Deckard kills a lot of innocent people and conventionally protagonists are supposedly hero’s this means that as an audience we could get confused as right and wrong is blurred. However Deckard is portrayed as someone who is very dominating and strong, he seems to be able to kill without any emotions, and the narrative then takes us on a journey and shows the change in him and how he becomes a better character and sacrificing his own life.

There is also intertexuality in the film and the most striking one would be the scene where Deckard finds something in a picture. In this scene the director deliberately uses the camera shots and editing to intensify and build importance of the scene by holding shots for longer on extreme close ups of his face showing emotion and concentration. The scene follows Deckard’s feet walking across a room, at low angle which could signify development and progress that is dark and has lots of oak furnishing, making the room look vintage. The camera then tracks upwards to show the ancient looking TV in mid shot which the audience then discover it is voice activated, making the scene postmodern as it shows again the mix between times. We then see a series of close ups and shuttering of shots from the TV as it revealed a woman in a mirror picture. Although this is significant in the narrative it is also an intertextual reference of the Van Dyke portrait, celebrating its unique attributes.